Shades of Love
by Indigo Oblivion
Summary: Running away to the Abbey hadn't saved him from the darkness he'd wanted to escape as a child. It had planted it inside of him and nurtured it. In the few seconds that passed as his father brushed passed him contemptuously without a word, Bryan realized that he really could kill this man, and feel nothing. That realization scared him more than his father ever had. T for Language


**Black.**

He might as well have been a lodger in his father's house.

"...Daddy?"

He was sure that's what the neighbours thought he was. After all, he didn't look a thing like the other three people living here.

"_Dad-dy._"

Actually, make that two.

Through half opened lids, pale grey eyes slowly traveled across the room and came to rest upon the smallest person there. Fine, downy ash-brown hair that didn't curl in any particular direction, but rather flicked out here and there, around his ears and across the back of his neck. Slowly growing heavy with baby sweat as they approached the third day of it not being washed.

He had big, round, deep olive coloured eyes that held nothing but warmth, and naivety. Just like the mother he'd inherited them off, who hadn't been home in three days.

The boy's name was Tyler, and he'd recently turned three years old.

There were a lot of threes going on here, Bryan thought vaguely. It's a shame the same couldn't be said for the number of empty cans and bottles lying around the third man in the room. Bryan didn't even bother counting them, knowing he'd achieve nothing besides growing a little more furious with each accumulative one.

Still… three days without a bath. Bryan thought fleetingly about running one for him, but Kate was always the one who bathed Tyler. Bryan didn't have a clue what the fuck to do there. How high to fill the tub, how hot the water should be. Should he stay in the room with Tyler while he was in the bath to make sure he wouldn't drown? _Could_ a kid even drown in the bathtub? Bryan didn't know. The tub wasn't much more than a foot deep really, but Tyler was small for his age. He was smart too, though.

Maybe Bryan would just make him stand there and he'd aim the shower hose at him or something.

Maybe Jason would wake the fuck out of the stupor he'd drank himself into and take care of his kid for a change. That'd be something.

"Daddy!" Tyler sing-song growled again, this time with an insistent shake of Jason's leg, too. Hm. Maybe Bryan would forget the bath for now and just leave him to it. He was so determined in his little mission to wake the bastard up.

Their father looked so much older than Bryan remembered.

When he was born, Jason and his mother were still young. Too young to be raising a family, he would have said. The father of his memory lacked the lines on his brow and around his eyes that he had now. Bryan remembered him when he had slightly fresher skin and brighter eyes. Now he just seemed like a… dull smudge. Not quite a shadow of himself, because he was just as useless then as he was now. The only difference was that now, he _looked_ just as pathetic as he really was. Years of smoking, alcoholism and being an asshole do that to a person.

Jason hadn't really moved off that patchy little armchair since Kate left after the fight. It's where he drank, were he slept. He left occasionally to take care of his own needs, but that was it really. He did put Tyler to bed yesterday, but it was five in the afternoon and the kid wasn't even sleepy. Slightly confused as to why he was being put to bed so early, but a smile crept around his little face when he was scooped up off the floor. Daddy hadn't forgotten him.

Another glance to the left told Bryan that Tyler had gotten impatient and decided to take a more direct course of action. He was now shaking Jason by the shoulder after scrambling up into his lap. And it was actually working for him.

"Daddy?" he said again, this time with a hint of pride in his voice that he might finally have succeeded in waking his father up.

"Hnng, wh – ?" Jason mumbled, his dull blue eyes visible for a second under half-lidded eyes before they eased shut again.

"_Daddy,_" Tyler scolded, sounding suprisingly stern for a three year old. "Wake up," he said, reaching out a chubby little hand and holding Jason's brown hair out of his eyes.

"Nng, 'lright, alright. What s'it, Tyler?" he said blearily, removing the child's hand from his forehead and trying to sit up a little straighter. He brought a hand to his temple pushed down there. He had a headache.

Good, Bryan thought vindictively.

Bryan shifted slightly in his seat on the old couch in the opposite side of the small room, the movement making his few cracked ribs sear with pain. But not even a sharp breath of pain escaped his lips and he continued to watch the exchange with eyes like a hawk. Post-stupor Jason tended not to be friendly. Not that he was ever friendly.

"...When's momma come home?" he asked, in one of the smallest voices Bryan had ever heard him use. He stilled in his seat, waiting for Jason's response.

"… She's not," he said, finally.

"Why?"

"Because she's not."

"But _why _not?"

Something flashed in Jason's eyes and he raised his hand. In the split second it took Bryan to shoot to his feet they locked eyes, dead blue and fierce grey. They both froze for a moment, the briefest of moments. But then his father brought his focus back to Tyler, and he tucked one of those little curling locks behind his ear. Bryan felt his shoulder's ease up, and as the slight burst of adrenaline faded, his ribs began to scream at him for the sudden movement. Yeah, well fuck them.

"She just isn't," Jason said quietly. "She's not comin' home, Tyler."

Tyler loved his mother. Loved her like the air and sun. He'd only been living with them since late October. It was March now. In those few months, he'd never seen Tyler so bright and happy as when he and Kate were together, playing with his toys, brushing through her hair, singing in their dingy little garden as she watered and weeded and he played with bugs.

And now she was gone, hurt and frightened and threatened away by the very man who did the same thing to Bryan's mother ten years ago back in Russia.

All Bryan could think is that Tyler, being so young and soft, might at least forget what he saw that day. He might not have to know darkness. Bryan, slightly older and six years old at the time, didn't have that luxury. He remembered everything.

Slowly, Tyler reached out a little hand and tenderly patted Jason on the cheek, leaving it to rest there when he was done. He didn't burst into tears at his father's words, like Bryan thought he might. Didn't throw a tantrum, pout or scream. Bryan just stood and watched as Tyler, with his tiny palm on his father's cheek, said, ever so quietly, "Don' be sad, Daddy. It's okay. Nomore sad now please, Daddy." Then, as Tyler threw his little arms around his neck in his best impression of a bear hug, Bryan left the room.

He slowly made his way into the kitchen, hugging his side, and rooted in the cupboard a little for some painkillers and a clean glass. There wasn't one, so he was left to rinse one out instead. When he turned around again, he saw that Jason was standing there in the doorway. Bryan spared a moment to shoot him his harshest of glares, before turning his back on him and unscrewing the cap off the bottle of aspirin.

Shuffled footsteps told him that Jason was making his way toward the fridge, and after a clinking Bryan realized with a scowl that he was grabbing another bottle from the fridge. He could hear that the television in the next room had been switched on to the kids channel, and assumed that Tyler was left in there to watch.

A few seconds later and Jason was right beside him, rummaging around for the bottle opener in the drawer by which Bryan was standing. Clearly the bastard couldn't give it a rest long enough to spend five minutes with his son. Bryan didn't even bother moving an inch to accommodate his search. He just settled for ignoring his father's presence entirely, opting to glare stormily out of the night-darkened window above the sink. But he couldn't see past his own reflection.

A swollen and bruised eye, split brow, patched up cheek – evidence of his most recent fight with Jason in which, in a bizarre and unseen turn of events, he came out worse for once. He supposed it didn't help that Kate and Tyler were screaming in the background when it happened.

She'd tried to leave. She'd had enough, Tyler wasn't going to grow up surrounded by violence. She was taking him with her. Jason wasn't going to stand for that.

Bryan came back from school that day to the sound of screaming, everywhere. Bags half open, clothes all over the place. Kate held up against the wall by her hair, the bright, streaming split on her lip the most evident of his recent handiwork, but certainly not the only one.

Bryan didn't even remember thinking. It was more instinct than anything. When he was a child, he'd always tried to pull this man away from his mom when he got too angry. It was only now that he was big enough to pull it off.

Of course, he wasn't thinking straight. He was too concerned making sure the other two weren't caught in the middle of it, of making sure that Jason didn't lay another hand on Kate. That Tyler didn't see him hurting her anymore. He wasn't bothering to cover himself.

One broken bottle to the face and a dirty blow to the temple and he was out cold. He supposed the bastard had aimed a kick or three to his ribs while he was out, judging by the way they felt every time he fucking took a breath.

When he came to, the damage was already done. Kate was gone, and another little boy was left without his mother.

Bryan could still feel Jason in the room and when he turned his head to the side, he saw that he was resting his weight against the counter, watching him as he worked the bottle cap off. His blank face was a stark contrast to the twisted mask of anger he was so accustomed to seeing.

Bryan cussed and turned his gaze away, but not before noting that his father's split knuckles were still bandaged with those little duckie band-aids, courtesy of Tyler. Bryan had a few of them over his face, too, when he came around after the fight. They did absolutely nothing for him, of course, and he'd had to remove them to clean and patch himself up properly, but he couldn't help but want to smile a little when he thought of it.

But then he thought again of Tyler's consoling words to him in the other room just a moment ago, and he soured up again.

"...I don't know why, but that kid loves the shit out of you," Bryan said quietly, reaching in his back jeans pocket for a smoke. He lit it and took a drag, but didn't feel the same relief as usual, seeing as every breath made him want to wince.

"'Course he does. He's my boy," Jason replied after a few moments, setting the bottle opener on the counter with a chink.

Bryan's lips twisted into a half-smirk of disbelief and disgust, before he shook his head and blew out a cloud of smoke. _I'm your boy, too_, he wanted to say,_ but that's never done either of us any favours._

But Bryan said nothing.

He just glared out the window again, past his refection and into the darkness. He wasn't thinking anything in particular. If he were to describe his mind right now, he'd probably say it was like the puffs of cigarette smoke he was blowing out. Just a rolling cloud of angry, bitter, resentful noise and formless emotions.

The whole house was quiet but for the sounds of his slightly labored breathing, the television in the next room, and Jason's drinking.

His father was stuck in one of those strange moods again. A rare and strange calm that only happened every once in a while, after a particularly bad rage and drinking session. For some reason, he wasn't looking for a fight today and, frankly, Bryan wasn't either.

Although, cracked ribs or not, he might be spoiling for one soon if Jason didn't stop fucking looking at him like that.

"What?" he spat, looking sideways at him.

Jason didn't say anything, just shook his head a little and glared off to the side. Bryan did the same, and then cursed silently at just how many of this man's mannerisms he still had. Not even the Abbey had managed to beat them out of him.

"Are you… y'know…" he said eventually, quietly and with a slight awkwardness. Bryan looked back around and caught his father gesturing at his face, beer bottle still in-hand. And then his mind put two and two together and figured out all of the staring. Jason might actually be a little _concerned_ for once.

Bryan laughed under his breath scathingly, and immediately regretted the action it because it hurt twice as much as breathing. "Fuck.." he breathed, doing his damnedest not to grasp his side. "Don't flatter yourself," he spat, taking another drag on his cigarette once the searing had settled, not even bothering to look at his father.

Asking him if he was alright… what the fuck was he thinking? After all these years, too.

Jason had never shown an ounce of concern or remorse when _his_ mother left all those years ago. When he used to knock _him_ around as a kid, when he was half his height and not even a third his weight. When he had to hit the streets and tug at old lady's skirts for scraps, when he learnt to steal to eat. When he ran away at eight years old, and was never even searched for.

He was always a useless-as-shit husband, and an even worse father. So why this fleeting humanity now?

Why the _fuck_ now?

"Look. Bryan, I…"

"– I don't wanna hear it," Bryan growled, cutting in.

For some reason, in the quiet of this room, where the silent threat his father had always radiated when Bryan was a child was strangely absent and where, for once, Jason seemed almost apologetic, Bryan felt all the years of anger and hate rise up and boil within him. He embraced the hate that was all he knew.

He didn't want to hear anything this man had to say. He didn't want to look at him, be in the same room as him, anything. He sure as hell didn't want to consider that he had a shred of anything half-way decent in him. As far as Bryan was concerned, Jason's fists were the only thing he'd ever been acquainted with, and that was the only element of his personality that he was concerned about. There wasn't anything else.

Jason had two sons in this house. If he could knock around the one, he could sure as hell do it to the other. That was all Bryan was waiting for. On edge for it, every single second of every day – and now more than ever, now that Kate had been driven away. Because Bryan couldn't help but see himself in that little boy.

But Tyler still had his whole life ahead of him, and God damn it Bryan would not see it wasted away in darkness like his was.

"Your.. apologies, or whatever the fuck it is you're trying to say – I'm not interested," Bryan said, finally turning around to face his father head on and look him in the eye. He spoke calmly, quietly, almost in a whisper. "I don't care that you drove my mom away, and I don't care that you've frightened Kate away. I don't even give a shit about _this_," he said, gesturing to himself as he took a few steps forward. "But if you _ever_ lay a finger on that little boy – just once – I swear to God, Jason, I will _fucking_ kill you."

There wasn't even a foot between them, now. Silence followed, and they just stared at each other hard blue into equally hard grey. And as Bryan glared into the eyes of the man he'd grown to fear and eventually hate, he knew that he could do it. He wasn't just blowing off hot air, throwing empty threats around because it made him feel better. Running away to the Abbey hadn't saved him from the darkness he'd wanted to escape as a child. It had planted it inside of him and nurtured it.

In the few seconds that passed as his father brushed passed him contemptuously without a word, Bryan realized that he could really could kill this man, and feel nothing.

And for some reason, that realization scared him more than his father ever had.

* * *

_**A/N: **Hi guys, Indie here! Well, yeah so, one of the things I've noticed reading over my reviews for **Spaces** is that there are a few of you there who have said how much they like my Bryan. Not gonna lie, I love my Bryan too. xDD_

_So yeah, there's so much of him you haven't seen, and I thought I'd share some of it. This will be updated whenever the hell it gets updated. It's not so much a story as it is a series of one-shots following Bryan at various points in his life. Readers of Spaces may recognize this. If you don't, feel free to hop along over there are read **Chapter Three: Looking Back, Moving Forward.**  
_

_Happy readings and have a nice week everyone. (I promise, I promise, Gemini is next on my list!)  
_

_~ Indie  
_


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